I watched my Yorkshire friends' facebook postings with a sage nod and commented to my more southerly acquaintances, 'ah yes, snow up North,' before assailing them with tales of my first winter in Bradford as Mark's young fiancee, when he drove through a foot of snow to rescue me from my office block in gridlocked and snow blanketed Leeds, arriving at 2am with his parents in the back as 'ballast'!
The snow came to us yesterday. It fell, at first, in those small, fast-falling dry specks that promise nothing.
"I'm afraid there won't be enough, darling," I said to Robin who sat on the windowledge behind the blind, watching in anticipation, her breath steaming the cold glass. This she ignored, and in faith, started musing on the merits of different types of snowman nose.
"Why do some people use satsumas? You're supposed to use carrots. Satsumas look silly. It's not right! It should be a carrot."
As we watched, the flakes grew fat and fell from the white sky innumerable, dizzying and relentless. It was this type of snow, I imagined, that Grimm saw as the feathers of Mother Holle's eiderdown.
Mark watched - grim too - facing more cancellations due to snow. But he left, this morning - slooshing 5 inches off the car - for Sunderland - via a carol service in Birmingham - with a duvet and pillow on the back seat, wellingtons in the boot and a candle in the glove compartment.
I rather like the snow as it confounds our presumptious insistence that life be predictable and controllable, but that's an unpopular view, and I work from home, so I'll share it and then stop there.
I note that Mark's twitter feed tonight states that the 'snow has come' to Sunderland. So I retreat to bed and wonder if I'll see him before dawn.
Read last month's post: control freak
